Historically, communication devices, such as telephones, use a single omni-directional microphone intended to be located near the speaker to detect sound in a 360-degree uniform field. However, the farther the speaker is from the microphone, the lower the speaker's contribution to the captured audio becomes, resulting in reduced speech-to-noise ratio. This is a particular problem as the use of communication device such as speakerphones, conferencing devices and voice over IP (VOIP) systems has continued to increase.
Various techniques have been developed to attempt to increase the effective speech-to-noise ratio. One approach is to equip the communications device with one or more directional microphones, or two or more omnidirectional microphones, which allows the communication devices to capture noise by forming directional beams, which capture more of the desired signal, but less of the noise, thus increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. However, the processing required to direct multiple microphones is often computationally expensive and cost prohibit.